accelerator

American  

[ak-sel-uh-rey-ter] / ækˈsɛl əˌreɪ tər /

noun

accelerators plural

1. a person or thing that accelerates.

2. Automotive. a device, usually operated by the foot, for controlling the speed of an engine.

3. British. any two- or three-wheeled motor vehicle, as a motorcycle or motor scooter.

4. Photography. a chemical, usually an alkali, added to a developer to increase the rate of development.

5. Also called accelerant.  Chemistry. any substance that increases the speed of a chemical change, as one that increases the rate of vulcanization of rubber or that hastens the setting of concrete, mortar, plaster, or the like.

6. Anatomy, Physiology. any muscle, nerve, or activating substance that quickens a movement.

7. Also called particle accelerator.  Also called atom smasher.  Physics. an electrostatic or electromagnetic device, as a cyclotron, that produces high-energy particles and focuses them on a target.

8. Economics. acceleration coefficient.

9. Business. an enterprise that provides investment funding and short, fixed-duration mentoring and education programs to a select group of startups that apply for this, including access to networking, strategy coaching, collaborative workspace, etc.

---

accelerator British  

/ ækˈsɛləˌreɪtə /

noun

1. a device for increasing speed, esp a pedal for controlling the fuel intake in a motor vehicle; throttle

2. Also called (not in technical usage): atom smasher.  physics a machine for increasing the kinetic energy of subatomic particles or atomic nuclei and focusing them on a target

3. chem a substance that increases the speed of a chemical reaction, esp one that increases the rate of vulcanization of rubber, the rate of development in photography, the rate of setting of synthetic resins, or the rate of setting of concrete; catalyst

4. economics (in an economy) the relationship between the rate of change in output or sales and the consequent change in the level of investment

5. anatomy a muscle or nerve that increases the rate of a function

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• accelerators
  plural

Etymology

Origin of accelerator

First recorded in 1605–15 and in 1930–35 accelerator for def. 7; accelerate + -or ²

Explanation

An accelerator makes things go, or accelerate. The gas pedal on a car is an accelerator, but so is a machine that scientists use to speed particles up and smash them. An accelerator gets things going. In a car, the accelerator is the gas pedal that you mash with your foot when you’re ready to speed off into the sunset. In physics, a particle accelerator speeds off in a different way — it takes a particle, such as an electron, and speeds it up to almost the speed of light, and smashes it into an atom. Why? To see what it’s made of.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

accelerator accelerators

As England hit the accelerator, India became ragged - Shivam Dube had an awful time in the field.

From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2026

Tesla executives disputed Butler’s account, saying the car’s driver pressed the accelerator pedal down and kept it pressed even after the crash.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026

The world's most powerful particle accelerator will Monday shutter operations for four years of renovations to dramatically boost its collision-capacity and the potential for unlocking one of the greatest mysteries of the Universe: dark matter.

From Barron's ● Jun. 27, 2026

Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s vice president of AI software, said on X that the driver had manually overridden the system by “by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.”

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 24, 2026

Every time she steps on the accelerator it’s so tentative.

From "The Benefits of Being an Octopus" by Ann Braden

However, the authors emphasize that being beyond the reach of current particle accelerators does not make the theory impossible to test.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 5, 2026

What Qualcomm has laid out is a full stack that spans CPU compute, AI accelerators, a new memory design and the high-speed connectivity that ties a rack together.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 25, 2026

OpenAI and Broadcom first announced a partnership to build AI accelerators last October.

From Barron's ● Jun. 24, 2026

SK Hynix, a key supplier of high-bandwidth-memory products used in Nvidia’s AI accelerators, in April posted a fivefold jump in quarterly net profit on surging demand.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 2026

However, experiments with large particle accelerators indicate that at high energies the strong force becomes much weaker, and the quarks and gluons behave almost like free particles.

From "A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays" by Stephen Hawking

Related Words

• particle accelerator